The Village must feel like heaven on earth for Gaël:«J’ai croisé un basketteur, je ne vous dirais pas qui, et je suis allé le voir pour lui dire que j’étais un grand fan, explique Gaël Monfils. Et il m’a répondu: mais moi aussi, je suis un super fan de toi.» Le Village olympique village de vacances
"I saw a basket-ball player, I won't tell you who it was, and I went to tell him I'm such a huge fan of his. And he answered: 'but I'm a big fan of you too'."

Hanescu next, Gaël leads 2-1 in the h2h (and the loss doesn't really count, that was a pure tank in the semi-final of Bucharest, not Gaël's finest hour! I remember Hanescu had a few harsh words about him after the match too. ^^)

The Village must feel like heaven on earth for Gaël:«J’ai croisé un basketteur, je ne vous dirais pas qui, et je suis allé le voir pour lui dire que j’étais un grand fan, explique Gaël Monfils. Et il m’a répondu: mais moi aussi, je suis un super fan de toi.» Le Village olympique village de vacances"I saw a basket-ball player, I won't tell you who it was, and I went to tell him I'm such a huge fan of his. And he answered: 'but I'm a big fan of you too'."

Hanescu next, Gaël leads 2-1 in the h2h (and the loss doesn't really count, that was a pure tank in the semi-final of Bucharest, not Gaël's finest hour! I remember Hanescu had a few harsh words about him after the match too. ^^)

American?? Kobe or Mr.LeBron?

Tell me, Gael!!

__________________

"History is filled with losers who never won anything themselves, but who ruin the success of others."

Yup that's Gael, always so reserved and secretive! Thanks for all of the translations everyone! The powercord on my laptop broke last evening (after all the stores had closed). So unfortunately, I didn't get to stream any of these matches as my computer battery died. So glad to see these results as I step into work this morning!

Gaël said yesterday that the difficulty for him also is to focus on the tennis event and not get too excited because he's at the Olympics. So he says to himself that if he plays well, he will stay longer and will have more chances to see all the other athletes too.

He doesn't sound very enthusiastic about his performance! A win in straight sets, against a guy who was able to beat Bolelli, that's a good job, Gaëlou. We don't expect beautiful tennis in these conditions!

There is an audio interview here: http://www.fft.fr/filinfos/default.asp?ID=3960
He says he still has lapses of concentration. And there still are a lot of things to improve. So far, it's been enough to win, but he'll need to be more aggressive, on the BH side in particular. He was playing rather slowly in his first 2 matches, it's not easy to "play out" points, but he hopes his game will continue to improve at its own pace.
He still had enough energy for a 3rd set, but he's happy to have won in 2 since they have a doubles match to play tonight.

And the journalist says it was a victory "made in Monfils", without playing really well, but varying the pace a lot and with some unbelievable defensive actions. He also stresses it was horribly hot.
Gaël could have served it out at 5-4, but Hanescu broke back and Gaël was a bit lucky in the TB according to the journalist. A FH attack clipped the line and gave him a MP; and he closed it out with a passing-shot which touched the rim of the net.